Giant new species of jellyfish hits beach

By Brad Lendon, CNN

Updated 2:10 PM ET, Fri February 7, 2014

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

A new species – A 5-foot giant jellyfish recently washed up on a beach in Tasmania, an island off the southeast coast of Australia. Scientists are working to classify the new species. Click through the gallery to see more photos of jellyfish around the world.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

West Coast sea nettle – A West Coast sea nettle swims in the Aquarium of the Pacific complex in Long Beach, California. Sea Nettles are most common during fall and winter months on California and Oregon shores, and may be found from Mexico to British Columbia. They're known for having a distinctive golden brown bell, up to 30 centimeters in diameter. Contact with the tentacles can produce a painful sting.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Not their natural color – These psychedelic jellyfish are part of a display at Beijing's Blue Zoo Aquarium. "Jellyfish occur in all marine waters from pole to pole and at all depths," says Dr. Lisa-Ann Gershwin, author of "Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean." Life threatening varieties are found from about 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south latitude.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

"Turn off the lights, and we'll glow." – These moon jellyfish are illuminated by colored lights at the Beijing Aquarium, the largest in China. They also call these "common" jellyfish. They're found in all the world's oceans, making them a popular choice for aquariums.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

"Am I getting hazard pay for this?" – A diver attaches a sensor to a large Nomura's jellyfish off the coast of Komatsu in Ishikawa prefecture, northern Japan. Large schools of these giant jellyfish, which have bodies ranging one to 1.5 meters in diameter, drift into Japanese waters in autumn and damage coastal fisheries.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Lion's mane – A lion's mane jellyfish swims near England's Farne Islands. This species is the largest of all jellyfish, and also one of the most dangerous, say scientists. Lion's manes have thick masses of dangling tentacles covered with stinging cells called nematocytes.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Papuan jellyfish – A Papuan -- or spotted -- jellyfish swims in a tank at the Sunshine Aquarium in Tokyo. According to National Geographic, their venom is mild and doesn't pose a threat to human beings.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Pacific sea nettle – Though most of us try to avoid jellyfish in the ocean, few dispute how cool they look at in a well-lit tank. These Pacific Sea nettle jellyfish are part of a display at the Shark Reef Aquarium at the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Summer invadors – Driven by overfishing and climate change, the dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world is a sign of ecosystems out of kilter, warn experts. Venomous mauve stingers (pictured), or Pelagia noctiluca, were found in high numbers along the coast of Catalonia and Valencia in summer 2013.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Painful but pretty – This northern sea nettle is part of the jellyfish exhibition added to the SeaLife aquarium in Timmendorfer, Germany, earlier this year. Northern sea nettles, or chrysaora melanaster, are commonly found in the waters of the North Pacific.

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

Jellyfish and tourism – "Quite simply, most of us just don't like the thought of being stung by something slimy," says Dr. Gershwin. "There's the slime. There's the pain. So, more and more, places around the world that are suffering from jellyfish problems are developing prediction systems so that tourists can know when it is safe to swim."

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Photos:Jellyfish gallery

The Irukandji – Despite being smaller than a pinky nail, the irukandji packs a bigger punch than most species of jellyfish. "How toxic they are is just phenomenally frightening and equally fascinating," says jellyfish expert Dr. Gershwin. "Just the lightest brush -- you don't even feel it -- and then whammo, you're in more pain than you ever could have imagined, you are struggling to breathe, you can't move your limbs, you can't stop vomiting and your blood pressure just keeps going up and up."

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Story highlights

5-foot-diameter jellyfish found on Tasmania

Scientist is trying to set name for the creature

New jellyfish is believed to be related to others in the area, scientist says

Jellyfish numbers swelling off Tasmania

Call it "big snotty."

It is a giant 5-foot diameter new species of jellyfish that slimed a beach in Australia last month, much to the delight of Lisa-ann Gershwin, a scientist at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Gershwin said the milky white creatures with pink in the middle have not been classified by science, but they've been spotted before. Recently, however, they've been turning up more in the waters off Tasmania.

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"All of a sudden I started getting all these calls, and all these people sending me photographs. Sure enough this thing is an absolute menace this season; it's been around in large numbers," Gershwin told the Herald.

They are not deadly to humans though.

"If you touched it or whacked into when you were swimming it is very painful," Australian Broadcasting quoted her as saying. "It's not life-threatening, but it will sting you, it will wake you up."

Gershwin said she got hold of some other, smaller specimens of the creature before Christmas.

"I've been ... working with jellyfish for a long time here and I've seen a lot of big jellyfish but this one's really big," ABC quoted her as saying.

And they are prolific, she said.

"We don't actually know what's going on that's led, not only to this species, but many, many types of jellyfish blooming in massive numbers," she told the Herald. "Jellyfish do bloom as a normal part of their life cycle, but not usually this many."

She told the Herald she has been working to get a scientific name approved for the new jellyfish, which she believes is related to previously identified jellyfish in the area called lion's mane, and sometimes "snotties."